“It is widely believed that our understanding of history comes from textbooks. This is not entirely the case” Photo: ncert.nic.in
Much ink has been spilled on the National Council of Educational and Research Training (NCERT) Omission of some details about the Mughals, among others, from the Class 12 textbook. The NCERT stated that the portions overlapped with the material covered in the previous sections and were omitted for the sake of brevity.
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It is widely believed that our understanding of history comes from textbooks. This is not entirely the case. Like most of the social sciences, our knowledge of history comes from lived experience. This includes everything we read in fiction or non-fiction or from the Internet; what we see on television or in the movies; what we are told by our friends and family in person or through social media; what we see of history in our daily experience as monuments or ruins; and the material things we deal with such as heirloom ornaments or clothes or food. The stories our families tell us, the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the places we go, all form the foundation of our working knowledge of history. This is not to diminish the role of the history textbook in education.
The role of the textbook in our understanding of history is powerful but limited. Orbits provide us with a framework that we can use to view events in the world. Classroom instruction provides us with a sequence of events. For example, a school student of history would roughly know that after the rule of the Delhi Sultanate, Delhi was ruled by the Mughals and then by the British. If someone had changed the facts and said that the British had come before the Mughals, the student would have learned too much to know rather than rely on them. Therefore, the aim of the textbook is to provide a systematic framework of factual information. After completing their schooling, most children would find it impossible to name the British Governor General of India, but they all would know that the Governor General was the supreme authority for the British Raj. So, we don’t really ‘learn’ history in school so much as the sequence of events in the past. The extent to which the school curriculum generates curiosity about history among students can be seen from the many complaints about how history is never taught in an interesting way in school.
great man theory
Thomas Carlyle, a 19th-century essayist, proposed a theory for the study of history called the Great Man Theory. He wrote that great men or influential and charismatic individuals, through intelligence or force, turn the course of history and the narrative of history needs to be studied through their actions. While seemingly revolutionary for its time, this was nothing new. History has always been viewed through the prism of individual ‘activists’ who are often not royalty. Much of the way history is taught and communicated can be traced back to the Great Man Theory. For one, the importance attached to dynasties and kings is often exaggerated. More significantly, using wars as milestones on a chronological roadmap also undermines the power of other ways of looking at history. The army is given a lot of importance in history; The pain and brutality that accompanies wars and invasions is often couched in words like ‘bravery’ and ‘glory’ to distract readers from the destruction and loss of life that these wars often unnecessarily bring with them. A more sensitive view of the past should be one where battles are viewed negatively in the scheme of historical narrative and more emphasis is placed on the damage caused by the conflict.
In the 20th century, an opposite way of approaching history emerged – mostly from historians with leftist leanings – called the history of the people. It sought to focus on the viewpoint of the common people and the larger social and economic forces, rather than the leaders. Another name for this approach to the study of historical narratives was ‘history from below’ because it told the stories of the dispossessed, the oppressed, the poor and the weak (often referred to as subalterns) who historically outlawed those in power. Have given.
Applying such an approach to communicating history, both in and out of the classroom, would have many implications. It will certainly open up the narrow prisms through which we have been forced to view history. If we no longer study about the wars and campaigns of kings or dynasties and instead learn about their social and administrative policies, the conditions of subordinates, and the daily routine of people, we can learn history that is less glamorous. but is far more true to its purpose. Ultimately, the purpose of communicating history is simple: to show how far we’ve come and how far we still have to go. The aim of communicating history should be to a citizen who is aware that the past is nuanced and complex. With this realization people will stop teasing history. Its path begins when students learn about history from an perspective that shifts attention away from individuals or dynasties and treats the subject as an evolving chronology of events.
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While the NCERT has the onerous duty of prioritizing and re-prioritizing what history needs to be compressed into the 300-odd pages of the textbook, the omission of information about the Mughals mars the factual retelling of an important era of Indian history. can be seen as a way of Even if erasing doesn’t make any significant difference to the public’s perception of them. Relatedly, a reconfiguration of how information about them is communicated will go a long way in dispelling ill-conceived notions about them.
Aditya Iyengar is the author of five critically acclaimed novels on mythology and historical fiction on the Cholas